Chapter 57: You have stolen my heart

He nodded again, even quicker than before. She pulled her hand away and he shuddered, as if she was about to hit him. She had no idea who he was or where he came from but seeing him like this made her sad. She wanted to help him, to do more than just give him her sneakers but she couldn’t do anything right now. She had too much on her plate.

“Stay safe, kid,” she waved at him, sat on Kellam’s bike and felt the harsh rubbery plastic on her bare feet.

She needed to go home and get ready. This was just the beginning.

Chapter 4

About a month later, Mina reached the small Romanian village of Rasinari. It was one of those place with barely a thousand people and everyone knew everyone, so any new face was looked upon with a mixture of distrust and curiosity. To her annoyance, no one spoke any English but when she mentioned the name Zeadore, people would look at her in fear, start crossing themselves and take out their rosaries to pray. That told her more than any English speaking person could.

Finally, she reached a small inn and there was a man who was supposed to take her up to the mountains with his small carriage. When she asked him why he didn’t meet her in the village square upon her arrival, as it was agreed, he just shrugged his shoulders, and spoke in broken English.

“I need drink first.”

Mina rolled her eyes, as she adjusted her heavy backpack. She hated the fact that she was in an unknown country without anyone to watch her back but she believed Emile was telling her the truth. Her gut told her he was to be trusted and her gut was usually right. The coachman offered no help with her backpack, so she just kept walking after him towards the village square, which was where she’d just come from. She was sweaty and annoyed, the worst possible combination when someone’s traveling.

She got into a carriage drawn by two horses and, immediately, felt like she was transported back a century or two. When she saw the condition of the roads and the high, winding paths that led even higher up the mountain, she realized that there was no way a

car could ever go through here.

The road was long and full of potholes, making the carriage lean to one side, she’d bump her head against the wooden roof, then it would lean to the other side. There was no way she could close her eyes, even for a second, and maybe take a nap, which she so desperately needed. About an hour or so later, the carriage suddenly stopped. Mina looked out and she saw nothing but vast, endless fields of greenery and snow covered mountain tops which spread out before her as far as the eye could see. The coachman knocked on the top of the carriage a few times, to signal their arrival.

“Are we there?” she asked him.

“You go out here,” he told her angrily, almost shouting at her.

Mina looked around again. There was no one here waiting for her and no sign of any civilized life resembling the infamous vampire academy. She immediately thought it was a trap. Was Emile lying after all? Her knife was not in her pocket now. Too many airport checks wouldn’t allow that. It was well stacked inside the sole of her boot, all she needed to do was press on it with her heel backwards and it would pop out like a grasshopper, ready for action.

Mina jumped out, taking her backpack with her. She noticed that the coachman remained in his seat, the bridle still firmly in his hand. He showed no inclination of getting off or even helping her with her luggage. The horses were unsteady. Their soft whinnies started getting louder, more unsettling. Even the horses didn’t like being here.

“You wait here,” he told her.

“Wait for what?” Mina wondered, but before she could ask another question, the carriage rushed off, as if something had spooked the horses, as well as the man responsible for them.

“Miss Lucy Wing?”

She heard her made up name being spoken by someone behind her. She jumped and turned as quickly as she could, forgetting that she had a heavy backpack resting on her back.

She came face to face with a man whose age she couldn’t even venture to guess. His face showed wrinkles of many summers up in the mountains but the way he offered to take her backpack, and put it on his back so effortlessly, revealed a body which was not that old.

“Please, follow me,” he told her instead of a greeting, then started up a small, goat path towards the top.